Understand a little more about how your site can chat with more leads, generate a better experience, and attract more customers.
There are a variety of factors that go into designing a successful business website. You need the attention of a variety of interested people. You need a workflow that ensures the project stays on track. You need talented designers and writers to convey all that valuable information you want to communicate to your customers – and potential customers.
But there are also many misconceptions about business Website Design Company. While these larger companies are obviously profitable, that doesn’t always mean they’ve fully figured out how to translate their success onto the Internet. We’ve seen companies with big budgets kill off a corporate website project. We’ve seen websites that are difficult to design and have so many mobile elements that they are impossible to navigate. We’ve seen basic websites and templates that don’t remotely communicate the capabilities of companies with incredibly impressive revenue streams.
So the moral of the story is that no matter the size of a company, or the scope of a project, there are always things that can go wrong when developing business websites. However, fear not: there are some simple concepts you can rely on to improve your company’s website performance, whether you’re starting from scratch or simply improving your current one.
- Clarity is always king
When people visit your website, they are looking for information. It’s really that simple. Perhaps they are looking to delve into your products and/or services. Maybe they are following your lead. Maybe this is their first experience with your brand.
That’s why it’s so important to explain quickly and clearly what you do. This involves the perfect marriage of design and content, and you don’t have to think too much at all. With the right messages, and the right calls to action, you can succinctly give your website visitors exactly what they’re looking for.
If you’re a titan within your industry – say Wal-Mart, Apple or Amazon – then maybe you can get away with assuming your customers know all about you. But for most businesses, your company ‘s website content strategy should treat your website visitors as if they were laypersons.
- Emphasize user experience
This continues the theme of the previous tip. If visitors are confused about what you do, they will definitely go elsewhere. But even if visitors know all about you, and struggle to navigate your site, then they will still lose interest. As we mentioned in the introduction, your site may be the most beautiful site in the world, but all those effects, images, animations, etc. are meaningless if visitors can’t find the information they’re looking for.
From a design standpoint, simple layouts that maximize white space, use effective graphics and photos, and avoid any clutter will be more appealing to your customers. And when it comes to content, focus on quality rather than quantity. Whether you’re writing a headline or a 1500-word blog post, your content should always answer this question: Is it somehow the solution to a customer’s problem? (More on this in a bit).
- Ensure your website’s response
Again, this tip builds on the previous one as it is directly linked to the project. So, to give the importance of responsiveness, here’s the perfect stat: in the last five years, mobile traffic has gone up 222%.
So it goes without saying that if your site isn’t responsive, you’re missing out on a ton of potential traffic. To dig a little deeper into these numbers, in 2013 smartphones accounted for approximately 16% of global web traffic, while in 2018 that number had jumped to approximately 52%.
While it seems absurd to say in 2019 that you need to have a responsive website, just take the time to browse corporate sites on the old world web using your smartphone or tablet and you’ll find that there are successful companies that still need the reminder. Maybe one day responsiveness will be assumed with every website build or redesign – but we’re not there yet, so we’ll continue to emphasize its importance.
- Solve your customers’ problems
The last two tips were more design-centric, so let’s focus on content for a second (apart from the “quality over quantity” advice). It’s important to have a comprehensive content strategy on the company’s website. This starts with understanding the sales journey. And if you understand the sales journey, you understand that your product or service is solving a specific customer problem.
If you take this concept seriously, it should permeate your entire content strategy. And keep in mind that we’re not just talking about articles and headlines. Your content should be varied for different types of consumers, which include videos, white papers, eBooks, infographics and, of course, blog posts. And while your content should be valuable, it should also be constantly updated so that it never becomes obsolete. Ultimately, the best business sites are more than just an online store—they’re resources for information-seeking customers.
- Don’t forget about lead and demand generation
There’s one thing the Internet can’t change: companies are still struggling to generate leads and brand recognition. Again, content plays a key role in this line.
If your website isn’t generating consistent business, something has gone wrong. If not, it’s time to review your calls to action and content offerings. By being more strategic with them across your site – and by creating landing pages unique to them – you have the potential to deliver more leads to your sales team.
For example, most business websites have the standard contact forms, but waiting for a customer to click on this call to action means you’re only counting one step of the sales journey – that moment when the customer has already decided to make a purchase . That’s great, but you must account for the different points in your sales funnel. For example:
Every business is different, but this serves as a good guide to the company’s website content from a lead generation and demand perspective.
Take the time to improve your company’s website
Hopefully the tips learned today are that even the smallest businesses can struggle online, especially when it comes to building and managing a user-friendly lead generating website. In fact, no business is immune from Internet failure, and the only way to survive is to have a philosophy of constant improvement to stay ahead of the competition.
Hopefully, if you’re a trader reading these tips, you’re nodding your head because you’ve been doing these things all along. But if you’re not, with a solid design and content strategy you can steer clear of course. Because there’s another lesson to learn today: it’s never too late to improve your company’s website performance.
